Monday, December 28, 2009
Video Copilot
I can not believe how little I have been using after effects now. lol. after watching hours of tutorials it makes me feel like I was just looking at the surface and poking it with a stick. Many more hours of tutorials to go and lots of practice, but at least now I got ideas and understanding of some great digital methods to help work around stuff.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Studies of the day
So I watched Dororo. Breathtaking movie. It takes the cheesy road of kung fu. But it does not do it in an overly sickening method. I hate that stuff. Too damn unreal. But hear the mix of fantasy with what far fetched battle techniques are like a silver lining. Then my wonderful wife introduced me to the writings of Isaac Asimov, I read The Last Question. GOOD GOD DAMN! I mean that with all caps. That man was ahead of his time. May his goldenage works live on to onor him for all of mans time.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Studies
So I watched Avatar today as well as Planet 51 and Astroboy. Good stuffers. Makes me kind of miss the fine works of miniatures though. I did like that Planet 51 referenced a lot of cult movies. Yesterday I watched Hellraiser up to 5. Not sure if I wanna continue watching. Kind of hard to go back in time and show more story. Then again, Highlander gave it a shot. meh.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Writing
Oi. Just got done editing my prologue. Go 6 hrs for 5 pages. But learned a lot of where i was going wrong with it.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Films
Ok. So I watched Big Man Japan. Great movie I do have to say. Interesting...style. I was so into at the end that when it happened, I thought that I was on a bad acid trip cause it took me like a left hook. Either the director was out of money and had to come up with something, Ran out of story, or was on LSD. Jesus Christ it was off the wall. Then I watched Divine Trash. Great ass movie. Gotta watch more of John Waters now. Then I watched Jab We Met. Very interesting to see other styles that I haven't really gotten into in the past.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Film festival
Sent my piece A Dream To Remember to the Palm Springs Film Festival. So hopefully it gets in. Third one down. Woot! Just hope that it gets in. The rewards for winning are awesome. Hope that I get a placement, hell, I even hope that it gets in and not rejected. That would be nice. lol.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Final Paper
Micheal S. Dirnberger
Understanding directing methods through comprehension of components
I have been studying character development, lighting, color theory, how to direct actors/actresses hands on (be it balance of ass hole and friend), frame shots, sound editing and give motivation to cast and crew. An emersion in movies (Features, Shorts, Television, Anime, Reality T.V.) has been my primary means of study. Followed up by articles, advice, and direct interaction on sets. There are many sources available, be it looking at autobiographies from directors, films on the life of, articles, web based media and reviews. There are a lot of things that I wished to learn and get acquainted with.
So at first I started my research in reading articles on character development and story development. I.E. How to build characters, How to work through developing a story, building three-dimensional characters, as well as do’s and do not’s of stories. I looked at pieces that worked within confines of time and space of film and viewers to develop and enhance character and viewer interdependencies. In doing this I studied short narrative animations, and the ways that they work. I know that they are not true derivatives of “narrative film”, however, they do work to tell a story and focus on dialogue and tension between each character throughout a story. Such stories as:
Air a Drama about a wandering man searching for something lost from his past. Interdependencies of characters are developed in this show that move in and out of each others lives with background story weaved in bits and pieces throughout the episodes. It is a swift paced moving style of drama though it seems to drag out in times, but those moments helped in pushing the drama and the moments shared with the characters.
Utawarerumono an anime about feuds and war and the rise of a nation. This story centers on a man that is lost and has amnesia and the haphazard incidents that drives a village to create a new nation out of necessity. The conflicts they face are realistic yet at the same time fanciful giving food for thought on how to push beyond our reality into the suspension of disbelief.
Last Exile a story about the power of human endurance and ability to overcome. The story is an action drama that centers around two characters working for a means to an end. Through their journeys we are presented with other characters and can see the growth of dependency of each character on the story and their impact emotionally on the growth and psyche of the viewer.
These are series that I have looked at over the summer studying the way that they develop story and work with limited dialogue. I chose Anime’s that I believe are against popular culture and general television because of the different types of narrative that is built within each. Each part is a whole and yet they still have a greater telling. I also sampled many other Anime’s seeing what I don’t want to do in playing into niches of culture.
From here I looked at films like:
The City of Lost Children a movie that takes place in a twisted parody of reality using stilted cinematic like those implored in early cinema in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This showed me a different way to incorporate the old into something new while the director made it their own.
Reign Over Me, an emotional melodrama about two men reconnecting after 9/11. It is a journey of spirit and the ability to move beyond hardships and grow as individuals together.
Repo: The Genetic Opera is an opera that utilizes song in story to tell a story. It is a Goth opera to be specific. Dark currents of hate and envy play a large role in moving the story forward showing me the ability to use anger and hatred to tell a story.
Superman Returns is an action movie. This one helped me with looking at building a quiet intensity in film, while the moments of loudness are punctuated by the surrounding silence.
The Warriors, a movie about gang violence and the reach for piece that is lost before it has a moment to begin. The flight of the assumed would be assailants from the crime scene while being chased gives another type of avenue of insight in how to give information to the viewers while withholding from the characters.
These helped me to study a range of different types of contemporary films and their story development. Doing this helped me to further understand “Dramatic tension” in stories, as well as gain a footing on further understanding characters as well as usage of dialogue in moving stories forward. This left me with more questions then answers. Why depend so heavily on narrative to move the story forward? When is application of heavy narrative worthwhile? What is the type of narrative that I wish to portray and tell?
The answer to these is that it depends. What type of story am I trying to tell? That question starts me now down a list of ideas and criteria that I mentally check off of my list. Am I working on a recollection? Do I want to show the recollection? Or do I wish to have the recollection verbal with emphasis on the now, and the past’s influence on the moment at hand. Am I showing events transpiring to guide emotional tension? Or am I using it as a crutch or filler. This made me wonder if the path I was searching down was worthwhile as well as aiding to the direction I wanted my research to go. I decided that it was, but I needed to dig deeper.
So I decided to switch my research to that of visual development. I studied films like Rashomon a stark contrast visually built in black and white guiding the eyes through shadows and light.
Ran and its usage of rich colors of wardrobe, story set up, and extravagant set designs.
Tudors and its rich color and lighting of mise en scene.
Then to Amelie and its limited color pallet and color correction built firmly in balance of each mood of scene.
Blindness and its usage of black and white light techniques while using color and rich surfaces and textures.
Where the great works of Akira Kurosawa are very important to me in set design and build up, they are over the top and outside of the current range of work as a student…currently. The happy accident of seeing Amelie and Blindness gave me a spin on my heals as to telling stories. The first being visually stunning and heavily dependant on color and balance, and the latter dependant on the contrast between light and darkness as well as the characters need for each other. This started me in on the line of needing to understand color theory and lighting.
So we were given a discussion on lighting and the different techniques in class. This helped me realize how ignorant I was allowing myself to be crutched on the need for just 3 point lighting. So I decided to abandon it as much as humanly possible. In reading the color theory article off of the C.A.S. I went down the list watching the movies and their different techniques and usages of light. Again I went to Ran, and then watched Man in the Moon, The Shining, The Godfather, Chinatown, and Days of Heaven. These showed me how to have films built with saturated hue, complimentary colors, warm/cool colors, warm colors, contrast of saturated/desaturated colors, and limited color pallets. This helped me see the application of lighting in cinema and understand what I want to use.
While researching this I have also been watching films about films. I watched The Cutting edge, A Born Liar, Overnight, The Kid Stays in the Picture, and Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director. These helped me develop a thorough understanding of the professional aspects and the type of stance that I need to have while working in the industry. It’s a lot like walking on eggshells on top of a wire over the Grand Canyon. Being firm on what I am wanting, and what I want for the shot is not being an ass hole. It is being a filmmaker. Not giving up till the take is the way I want it is within my rights. This lesson was learned first hand on my first project and I should have just dumped my cast, but alas I am still learning. This point was further pushed while watching Born Liar. The way that Fellinni worked with his actors and actresses was nerve racking for them. But almost every seen if not every seen is picture perfect for what he wanted. Trying to understand his work helped me with watching his movies. For though they are good, some do drone on I have found. Visually though, I cannot take my eyes away from them. So Juliette of the spirits became an influence heavily on what I wanted to do for a second project in regards to lighting, as well as Satyricon and its color. Per advise I also watched Cabaret in the means of helping me achieve my goal. Plus on advise I watched Cigarettes and coffee. The awkward silent tension of this film made me want to gouge my own eyes out with a soldering iron, but hey. It did help in what I was shooting and trying to take color to starkness as if in black and white. So now I have bridged into lighting that I feel I am growing comfortable with. While watching Satyricon I saw how lights were being used to enhance the set not overwhelm them. So now that I have toyed in using only gels, I plan on utilizing wardrobe and color schemes in moving forward with application of color theory and tonalities.
I have been working at being a regular at the local I.F.C. meetings. Here I am able to see first hand what other local Directors are working on and talk to them in-depth about their own processes in developing projects. Working in the community I have been learning first hand how to use and work in the community to network and trade working for work or assistance on projects. It’s not about having the money for projects; it’s now for me about making the connections for resources and trade labor.
These tools have come very handy. The IFC was most accommodating in helping me get a space for a decent rate and lend their voice to ideas on practices on the shoot. In working on my second project A Dream to Remember, I was tasking myself to build a story not heavy on dialogue in building the character, but as an assistant to the story. It was a second thought outside of how I wished to portray my character and those around her. This was I feel another learning experience for me. Once shooting was completed I had a visually stunning piece compared to the works that I had developed prior to it, and I believe that it carries the influences I looked at earlier and throughout the semester. That was the easy part for me. It was just getting myself under control of my thoughts and work step by step through what I wanted and directing my cast and crew in depth giving reasons for every action and setting them up with motives and artillery motives. The hard part was the sound design.
I have worked previously on sound, but nothing compared to the scope I was taking on here. Once I got started in it I wished that I had picked a lighter read. Of course I ignored this and stuck with the script feeling that if I was to learn anything from the experience it would be through the painstaking hours it would take in making the piece work to a level that I felt sounded natural to me. After days and weeks of recording and rerecording dialogue, I learned how to give advise on the sound and mood of the read. Where I wanted there to be a subtle shift in tonality. How to keep on pace with what is being worked on and to not skimp on thoroughness. I learned that mixing the audio separate was a task in and of itself real quick, and I had to rework the whole projects visual feel to get the audio to work. Good times, but hard ones in feeling like I had wasted time in completing edits without sound in mind. In truth it was not a waste though, nothing ever is, it is all experience moving forward. After lots of feedback I found out that my ruff for midterms was not the right tone of what people wanted. Yes the audio was still being worked out of its ruff stages, but I didn’t know how ruff till later on. The value of having a test audience I wish I had time for with each project before its due date. Not making excuses, because there are always people to have watch and listen,
But securing a target audience is difficult at best. After many more hours of sound design editing the process began to be a second nature sort of thing. In the end the mix down of audio actually brought the visuals back round to what I had originally intended the visuals to look like. Kind of wonderful to see the processes come full circle. Here in this project I learned to not bite off more then I can chew.
During this time of editing I also developed two other thorough stories that I was interested in shooting. So again the research process commenced. I watched Opera, Suspiria, 2046, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Hellraiser, Stranger Than Paradise, Wings of Desire, Faraway so Close, and A Simple Plan. These films helped me to grasp how horror was being done with color and worked in general, and story in black and white that was slow moving yet riveting and visually stunning. Pacing a story around these two different types of film was an undertaking for me at first. I wrote for man hours trying to develop plots and ideas that I felt would be good starting points for development, and versatility.
Into the marsh was the first one to begin the process of becoming a realization. Here I wished to create a story that was absent of verbal narrative. Just be visual and develop around a male figure with the victim being the viewer (the camera). I became fascinated with the identity of the fourth wall and self. I didn’t want it to be overpowering like in Funny Games. I wanted the realization of the camera as the viewer at the end of the piece. Try to make that connection from voyeur to participant a drastic switch. It was drastic and review did not like it one single bit. Parts were felt lagging and people wanted the feel sooner and more of a beat the viewer over the head sense. I conceded that parts were to long and reedited the piece. Personally I feel though that I hate how much our society feels they need to be spoon-fed. So on that portion of the critique I will not budge. I think that is an aspect of cinema that I do not wish to take part in no matter how people look at me or what I am doing. Another aspect that was huge for me was exterior.
All of my projects have either entirely or partially existed inside. So I felt that I needed a piece to exist in the outside where natural light is my only source by day and gels and soft lighting by night. Night shots failed miserably, and I found that clouds and the suns shift over time in the morning effects the finished product greatly. So where some scenes look blown out and shitty, those are points of interest with me in experimentation. As the old mantra goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I broke the shit out of some eggs! It’s good though, because I know what I want to try in the future with exterior light.
On my final project I swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. I decided to do a piece in black and white attempting to work with the concept of time and the moment in cinema. All black and white, it was to be done in a dark place with complete control of the environment, lights, sound, and setting. I dicked away the setting, but it can be fixed after many more hours of editing and blurring in post. I felt very comfortable with this piece in the sense of working it. The trick was the postproduction work, but after the midterm project sound is second nature and fun for me. I limited my hand in trying to make shots static as my actress sat through her interview, and then hand held the camera in the moment of chaos to try and give it a wild feel. I think that it was successful in what I was trying to get at even though a lot for people didn’t get it at critique. But that is why people do multiple test screenings; cause my second group that didn’t know much about the project understood it.
From here though I have learned many wonderful tools and techniques through studies and test shootings. I have garnered a new appreciation for set design, shot set up, color of a piece, feel and tonality, story limitations and advantages, on set time management, and better ways to direct cast and crew. The best way that I have garnered the information to lead me to the point that I am at now is through a mixing of studies and a lot of field work in trial and error. Its one thing to understand the why and how, it’s a whole other beast to actually apply the knowledge. Each piece that I have been segmenting and studying for implementation is good, but the real test is application of them all and being successful, which I have yet to do and work towards each time. My handlings of these parts has increased I believe, and I am very aware of these factors now in even the budding of an idea that I put to paper. It’s an entire process not just bits and pieces and I am planning to go forward with this in mind. From here I plan on working more with camera handling and finding my specific voice in narrative cinema. I learned a lot from this semester, I am still learning from it each time I look or think about what I have studied and learned. This all leaves me wondering about where I plan to go within narrative in future endeavors. I am hoping that an introspective break will assist me in figuring this question out and the many others that I am sure of will pop up during this investigation of self.
Bibliography
Apple, Wendy, The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, 2004, A.C.E.
Argento, Dario, Suspiria, 1977, Seda Spettacoli
Argento, Dario, Opera , 1987, ADC Films
Bausch, Richard, & Cassill, R.V., The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2006, W.W. Norton Company
Bazin, Andre, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, 1960, info not available
Binder, Mike, Reign Over Me, 2007, Relativity Media
Block, Bruce, The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media, 2001, Focal press
Bousman, Darren Lynn, Repo: The Genetic Opera, 2008, Twisted Pictures
Burstein, Nanette, & Morgen, Brett, The Kid Stays in the Picture, 2002, Highway Films
Caro, Marc & Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, The City of Lost Children, 1995, Club d'Investissement Média
Chigara, Koichi & Reed, Kristi, Last Exile, 2003, G.D.H.
Coppola, Francis Ford, The Godfather, 1972, Paramount Pictures
Fellini, Federico, Satyricon, 1970, Les Productions Artistes Associés
Fellini, Federico, Juliette of the Spirits, 1965, Rizzoli Film
Fosse, Bob, Cabaret, 1972, ABC Pictures
Hill, Walter, The Warriors, 1979, Paramount Pictures
Hirst, Michael, The Tudors, 2007, Reveille Productions
Hornecker, Eva, Space and Place- Setting the Stage for Social Interaction, 2005, University of Sussex
Ishihara, Tatsuya, Air, 2005, ADV Films
Jarmusch, Jim, Stranger than Paradise , 1984, Cinesthesia Productions
Jarmusch, Jim, Coffee and Cigarettes, 1986, Cinesthesia Productions
Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, Amelie, 2001, Claudie Ossard Productions
Katsura, Kenichiro Utawarerumono, 2006, ADV Films
Kubrick, Stanley, The Shinning, 1980, Warner Bros. Pictures
Kurosawa, Akira, Ran, 1985, Greenwich Film Productions
Kurosawa, Akira, Rashomon, 1951, Daiei Motion Picture Company
Low, Adam, Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director, 2002, BBC Arena
Malick, Terrence, Days of Heaven, 1978, Paramount Pictures
McNaughton, John Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer , 1986, Maljack Productions
Meirelles, Fernando, Blindness, 2008, Rhombus Media
Montana, Tony, & Smith, Mark Brian, Overnight, 2003, Black & White Productions
Mulligan, Robert, The Man in the Moon, 1991, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Mulvey, Laura, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975, JAHSonic
Pettigrew, Damian, Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, 2002, Portrait &Cie
Polanski, Roman, Chinatown, 1974, Paramount Pictures
Raimi, Sam, A Simple Plan, 1998, Paramount Pictures.
Singer, Bryan, Superman Returns, 2006, Warner Bros. Pictures
Spence, Louise, & Stam, Robert, Colonialism, Racism, and Representation, 1977, Oxford
Wenders, Wem, Faraway, So Close! 1993, Sony Pictures Classics
Williams, Linda, Film Bodies.Gender Genre and Excess, 1991, University of California press
Wenders, Wem, Wings of Desire , 1989, The Criterion Collection.
Wong, Kar Wai, 2046 , 2004, Arte Productions
Understanding directing methods through comprehension of components
I have been studying character development, lighting, color theory, how to direct actors/actresses hands on (be it balance of ass hole and friend), frame shots, sound editing and give motivation to cast and crew. An emersion in movies (Features, Shorts, Television, Anime, Reality T.V.) has been my primary means of study. Followed up by articles, advice, and direct interaction on sets. There are many sources available, be it looking at autobiographies from directors, films on the life of, articles, web based media and reviews. There are a lot of things that I wished to learn and get acquainted with.
So at first I started my research in reading articles on character development and story development. I.E. How to build characters, How to work through developing a story, building three-dimensional characters, as well as do’s and do not’s of stories. I looked at pieces that worked within confines of time and space of film and viewers to develop and enhance character and viewer interdependencies. In doing this I studied short narrative animations, and the ways that they work. I know that they are not true derivatives of “narrative film”, however, they do work to tell a story and focus on dialogue and tension between each character throughout a story. Such stories as:
Air a Drama about a wandering man searching for something lost from his past. Interdependencies of characters are developed in this show that move in and out of each others lives with background story weaved in bits and pieces throughout the episodes. It is a swift paced moving style of drama though it seems to drag out in times, but those moments helped in pushing the drama and the moments shared with the characters.
Utawarerumono an anime about feuds and war and the rise of a nation. This story centers on a man that is lost and has amnesia and the haphazard incidents that drives a village to create a new nation out of necessity. The conflicts they face are realistic yet at the same time fanciful giving food for thought on how to push beyond our reality into the suspension of disbelief.
Last Exile a story about the power of human endurance and ability to overcome. The story is an action drama that centers around two characters working for a means to an end. Through their journeys we are presented with other characters and can see the growth of dependency of each character on the story and their impact emotionally on the growth and psyche of the viewer.
These are series that I have looked at over the summer studying the way that they develop story and work with limited dialogue. I chose Anime’s that I believe are against popular culture and general television because of the different types of narrative that is built within each. Each part is a whole and yet they still have a greater telling. I also sampled many other Anime’s seeing what I don’t want to do in playing into niches of culture.
From here I looked at films like:
The City of Lost Children a movie that takes place in a twisted parody of reality using stilted cinematic like those implored in early cinema in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This showed me a different way to incorporate the old into something new while the director made it their own.
Reign Over Me, an emotional melodrama about two men reconnecting after 9/11. It is a journey of spirit and the ability to move beyond hardships and grow as individuals together.
Repo: The Genetic Opera is an opera that utilizes song in story to tell a story. It is a Goth opera to be specific. Dark currents of hate and envy play a large role in moving the story forward showing me the ability to use anger and hatred to tell a story.
Superman Returns is an action movie. This one helped me with looking at building a quiet intensity in film, while the moments of loudness are punctuated by the surrounding silence.
The Warriors, a movie about gang violence and the reach for piece that is lost before it has a moment to begin. The flight of the assumed would be assailants from the crime scene while being chased gives another type of avenue of insight in how to give information to the viewers while withholding from the characters.
These helped me to study a range of different types of contemporary films and their story development. Doing this helped me to further understand “Dramatic tension” in stories, as well as gain a footing on further understanding characters as well as usage of dialogue in moving stories forward. This left me with more questions then answers. Why depend so heavily on narrative to move the story forward? When is application of heavy narrative worthwhile? What is the type of narrative that I wish to portray and tell?
The answer to these is that it depends. What type of story am I trying to tell? That question starts me now down a list of ideas and criteria that I mentally check off of my list. Am I working on a recollection? Do I want to show the recollection? Or do I wish to have the recollection verbal with emphasis on the now, and the past’s influence on the moment at hand. Am I showing events transpiring to guide emotional tension? Or am I using it as a crutch or filler. This made me wonder if the path I was searching down was worthwhile as well as aiding to the direction I wanted my research to go. I decided that it was, but I needed to dig deeper.
So I decided to switch my research to that of visual development. I studied films like Rashomon a stark contrast visually built in black and white guiding the eyes through shadows and light.
Ran and its usage of rich colors of wardrobe, story set up, and extravagant set designs.
Tudors and its rich color and lighting of mise en scene.
Then to Amelie and its limited color pallet and color correction built firmly in balance of each mood of scene.
Blindness and its usage of black and white light techniques while using color and rich surfaces and textures.
Where the great works of Akira Kurosawa are very important to me in set design and build up, they are over the top and outside of the current range of work as a student…currently. The happy accident of seeing Amelie and Blindness gave me a spin on my heals as to telling stories. The first being visually stunning and heavily dependant on color and balance, and the latter dependant on the contrast between light and darkness as well as the characters need for each other. This started me in on the line of needing to understand color theory and lighting.
So we were given a discussion on lighting and the different techniques in class. This helped me realize how ignorant I was allowing myself to be crutched on the need for just 3 point lighting. So I decided to abandon it as much as humanly possible. In reading the color theory article off of the C.A.S. I went down the list watching the movies and their different techniques and usages of light. Again I went to Ran, and then watched Man in the Moon, The Shining, The Godfather, Chinatown, and Days of Heaven. These showed me how to have films built with saturated hue, complimentary colors, warm/cool colors, warm colors, contrast of saturated/desaturated colors, and limited color pallets. This helped me see the application of lighting in cinema and understand what I want to use.
While researching this I have also been watching films about films. I watched The Cutting edge, A Born Liar, Overnight, The Kid Stays in the Picture, and Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director. These helped me develop a thorough understanding of the professional aspects and the type of stance that I need to have while working in the industry. It’s a lot like walking on eggshells on top of a wire over the Grand Canyon. Being firm on what I am wanting, and what I want for the shot is not being an ass hole. It is being a filmmaker. Not giving up till the take is the way I want it is within my rights. This lesson was learned first hand on my first project and I should have just dumped my cast, but alas I am still learning. This point was further pushed while watching Born Liar. The way that Fellinni worked with his actors and actresses was nerve racking for them. But almost every seen if not every seen is picture perfect for what he wanted. Trying to understand his work helped me with watching his movies. For though they are good, some do drone on I have found. Visually though, I cannot take my eyes away from them. So Juliette of the spirits became an influence heavily on what I wanted to do for a second project in regards to lighting, as well as Satyricon and its color. Per advise I also watched Cabaret in the means of helping me achieve my goal. Plus on advise I watched Cigarettes and coffee. The awkward silent tension of this film made me want to gouge my own eyes out with a soldering iron, but hey. It did help in what I was shooting and trying to take color to starkness as if in black and white. So now I have bridged into lighting that I feel I am growing comfortable with. While watching Satyricon I saw how lights were being used to enhance the set not overwhelm them. So now that I have toyed in using only gels, I plan on utilizing wardrobe and color schemes in moving forward with application of color theory and tonalities.
I have been working at being a regular at the local I.F.C. meetings. Here I am able to see first hand what other local Directors are working on and talk to them in-depth about their own processes in developing projects. Working in the community I have been learning first hand how to use and work in the community to network and trade working for work or assistance on projects. It’s not about having the money for projects; it’s now for me about making the connections for resources and trade labor.
These tools have come very handy. The IFC was most accommodating in helping me get a space for a decent rate and lend their voice to ideas on practices on the shoot. In working on my second project A Dream to Remember, I was tasking myself to build a story not heavy on dialogue in building the character, but as an assistant to the story. It was a second thought outside of how I wished to portray my character and those around her. This was I feel another learning experience for me. Once shooting was completed I had a visually stunning piece compared to the works that I had developed prior to it, and I believe that it carries the influences I looked at earlier and throughout the semester. That was the easy part for me. It was just getting myself under control of my thoughts and work step by step through what I wanted and directing my cast and crew in depth giving reasons for every action and setting them up with motives and artillery motives. The hard part was the sound design.
I have worked previously on sound, but nothing compared to the scope I was taking on here. Once I got started in it I wished that I had picked a lighter read. Of course I ignored this and stuck with the script feeling that if I was to learn anything from the experience it would be through the painstaking hours it would take in making the piece work to a level that I felt sounded natural to me. After days and weeks of recording and rerecording dialogue, I learned how to give advise on the sound and mood of the read. Where I wanted there to be a subtle shift in tonality. How to keep on pace with what is being worked on and to not skimp on thoroughness. I learned that mixing the audio separate was a task in and of itself real quick, and I had to rework the whole projects visual feel to get the audio to work. Good times, but hard ones in feeling like I had wasted time in completing edits without sound in mind. In truth it was not a waste though, nothing ever is, it is all experience moving forward. After lots of feedback I found out that my ruff for midterms was not the right tone of what people wanted. Yes the audio was still being worked out of its ruff stages, but I didn’t know how ruff till later on. The value of having a test audience I wish I had time for with each project before its due date. Not making excuses, because there are always people to have watch and listen,
But securing a target audience is difficult at best. After many more hours of sound design editing the process began to be a second nature sort of thing. In the end the mix down of audio actually brought the visuals back round to what I had originally intended the visuals to look like. Kind of wonderful to see the processes come full circle. Here in this project I learned to not bite off more then I can chew.
During this time of editing I also developed two other thorough stories that I was interested in shooting. So again the research process commenced. I watched Opera, Suspiria, 2046, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Hellraiser, Stranger Than Paradise, Wings of Desire, Faraway so Close, and A Simple Plan. These films helped me to grasp how horror was being done with color and worked in general, and story in black and white that was slow moving yet riveting and visually stunning. Pacing a story around these two different types of film was an undertaking for me at first. I wrote for man hours trying to develop plots and ideas that I felt would be good starting points for development, and versatility.
Into the marsh was the first one to begin the process of becoming a realization. Here I wished to create a story that was absent of verbal narrative. Just be visual and develop around a male figure with the victim being the viewer (the camera). I became fascinated with the identity of the fourth wall and self. I didn’t want it to be overpowering like in Funny Games. I wanted the realization of the camera as the viewer at the end of the piece. Try to make that connection from voyeur to participant a drastic switch. It was drastic and review did not like it one single bit. Parts were felt lagging and people wanted the feel sooner and more of a beat the viewer over the head sense. I conceded that parts were to long and reedited the piece. Personally I feel though that I hate how much our society feels they need to be spoon-fed. So on that portion of the critique I will not budge. I think that is an aspect of cinema that I do not wish to take part in no matter how people look at me or what I am doing. Another aspect that was huge for me was exterior.
All of my projects have either entirely or partially existed inside. So I felt that I needed a piece to exist in the outside where natural light is my only source by day and gels and soft lighting by night. Night shots failed miserably, and I found that clouds and the suns shift over time in the morning effects the finished product greatly. So where some scenes look blown out and shitty, those are points of interest with me in experimentation. As the old mantra goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I broke the shit out of some eggs! It’s good though, because I know what I want to try in the future with exterior light.
On my final project I swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. I decided to do a piece in black and white attempting to work with the concept of time and the moment in cinema. All black and white, it was to be done in a dark place with complete control of the environment, lights, sound, and setting. I dicked away the setting, but it can be fixed after many more hours of editing and blurring in post. I felt very comfortable with this piece in the sense of working it. The trick was the postproduction work, but after the midterm project sound is second nature and fun for me. I limited my hand in trying to make shots static as my actress sat through her interview, and then hand held the camera in the moment of chaos to try and give it a wild feel. I think that it was successful in what I was trying to get at even though a lot for people didn’t get it at critique. But that is why people do multiple test screenings; cause my second group that didn’t know much about the project understood it.
From here though I have learned many wonderful tools and techniques through studies and test shootings. I have garnered a new appreciation for set design, shot set up, color of a piece, feel and tonality, story limitations and advantages, on set time management, and better ways to direct cast and crew. The best way that I have garnered the information to lead me to the point that I am at now is through a mixing of studies and a lot of field work in trial and error. Its one thing to understand the why and how, it’s a whole other beast to actually apply the knowledge. Each piece that I have been segmenting and studying for implementation is good, but the real test is application of them all and being successful, which I have yet to do and work towards each time. My handlings of these parts has increased I believe, and I am very aware of these factors now in even the budding of an idea that I put to paper. It’s an entire process not just bits and pieces and I am planning to go forward with this in mind. From here I plan on working more with camera handling and finding my specific voice in narrative cinema. I learned a lot from this semester, I am still learning from it each time I look or think about what I have studied and learned. This all leaves me wondering about where I plan to go within narrative in future endeavors. I am hoping that an introspective break will assist me in figuring this question out and the many others that I am sure of will pop up during this investigation of self.
Bibliography
Apple, Wendy, The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, 2004, A.C.E.
Argento, Dario, Suspiria, 1977, Seda Spettacoli
Argento, Dario, Opera , 1987, ADC Films
Bausch, Richard, & Cassill, R.V., The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2006, W.W. Norton Company
Bazin, Andre, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, 1960, info not available
Binder, Mike, Reign Over Me, 2007, Relativity Media
Block, Bruce, The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media, 2001, Focal press
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Caro, Marc & Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, The City of Lost Children, 1995, Club d'Investissement Média
Chigara, Koichi & Reed, Kristi, Last Exile, 2003, G.D.H.
Coppola, Francis Ford, The Godfather, 1972, Paramount Pictures
Fellini, Federico, Satyricon, 1970, Les Productions Artistes Associés
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Pettigrew, Damian, Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, 2002, Portrait &Cie
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Singer, Bryan, Superman Returns, 2006, Warner Bros. Pictures
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Nova project
We got our video up and about. Here is the link http://thewgbhlab.org/nova_video/future-evolution
New digital cinema
I think that it is interesting to see where nods are given where it can be due. The growth and influence of pop culture and trying to tailor work to the mass media is an interesting notion that it seems that we are all set to do. Not that we are willing to conform, but to experience and influence through reinvention is great. I hate to look at things as borrowing ideas and out right thievery of work. I think its more like sampling from my aspect. Much like a dj samples sound we sample techniques to reinvent the standards and limitations we face today. Kind of exciting to think of the possibilities of appropriation that sit at our finger tips. Text as images is a field that I think is still growing and will continue to do so well into 3-d cinema and push our relations with the written and spoken word. Tangible aspects and interaction like nodes through web based media is still growing and with the advent of site like youtube for poop culture and I don't know what the hell else people think on there and Vimeo for video artists and others along those lines allows for a great opportunity for visual artists to reach out and collaborate without having to wait till shows or festivals to become familiar with work and to create a dialogue of growth and resources for the artists themselves. To me I don't think there is such separation between visual and musical. I try to work and think of editing along the same aspects that I am now investigating scoring music for pieces. Like most movies we all have a feel to know when some action is supposed to happen based on prior ensembles that we have visually taken in. It is great to see how integral and prominent pieces are that work against this formula in developing stories. This read seams to echo a lot of ideas on what I have been reading in other articles. It just seems like video art is about to explode with growth and fruition in collaboration as it is becoming more and more a staple in culture. Not necessarily consumer culture the way it is now but to signs and signifers of ideas through visual and auditory implementation in effecting some sort of emotional response not driven by corporate moogling.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Writing
So I started getting my work out on the market today for feedback. Kind of exciting. So if you wanna read my pet project that I have been working on for the past 12 years, I will put up a link at the end of this. Kind of hard to imagine that I have been working on this in my spare time for so long. It excites me to remember when I put down the first letter to where it has grown now and how each exploration of the characters as helped shape who I am and help me find myself. I hope that you enjoy if you check it out. http://www.webook.com/project/Salvation-Vs-Damnation
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
working
So I recut some of my projects and did some more post work on them. Not to ban now I think. Then I watched some interesting films latel as well. I watched Ink, Thirst, A simple plan, and far away so colose. Great stuff. really made me more aware of different techniques to keep in mind while exploring what I want to do in regards to post house work on projects.
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